New play about Pakistani woman explores the complexity of South Asian culture

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Dil Ka, a play about a 26-year-old Pakistani woman preparing to meet her latest match for an arranged marriage, premieres at the Presentation House Theatre in North Vancouver today until March 31. 

Written by Lee Nisar, a writer and filmmaker based in Toronto, the play explores Nisar’s relationship with their culture. 

Since the protagonist, Zahra, spends most of her time cooking biryani, a traditional Pakistani dish, the play is set in a kitchen and explores it as a place of refuge and constriction but also freedom and confession for South Asian women. 

Growing up, Nisar often resented women’s assigned role of being confined to the kitchen in South Asian cultures. Through the play, Nisar explores the emotional geography of the kitchen. 

“It wasn’t until I got into the kitchen with [my mom] and experienced her getting help from my aunts and her friends, and just seeing them laugh, cook together, talk about these stories, that I was interested in exploring the other side of it,” they say. 

Nisar was 22 and in the last year of their undergraduate degree at the University of Guelph when they wrote Dil Ka, their first play. This was a time their parents started coming to them with matches for an arranged marriage. With uncertainty in their life about exploring gender and overcoming anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic, the play became a way for Nisar to explore their own identity and feelings. 

“Many people in arranged marriages agree to it because it’s what is done culturally, but [they] may not want to for various reasons, and I’m sure for many people that reason may have been because they were queer.”

Nisar says they also wanted to explore the comedic side of arranged marriages.

“I think arranged marriages are inherently very funny in the sense that it is kind of like a first date, but your parents are there.”

The biryani, Nisar says, is symbolic of a vessel for the main character, Zahra, to pour her feelings into. The dish comes together as Zahra gains clarity of her feelings but also creates a timeline for her to meet her match. 

Nisar says seeing the play grow since the stage reading and being supported by actors, designers, technicians, the creative team, and the director of Dil Ka, Tricia Trinh has informed their own writing. The growth, research, and life experience on Nisar’s behalf also helped shape the play and “get [it] to a place where [they] felt really strong about everything.”

Thinking about their own relationship with their language, Urdu, and trying to reconnect with it, Nisar wanted the name of the play to be in Urdu. They also wanted to reference hearts in the name and decided on Dil Ka, which means “of the heart.”

Nisar says the play is about queer brown joy, depicts the positive side of queer masculinity, and shows how family is something we try to distance ourselves from but can end up going back to. 

Being queer is considered a western ideal in the Brown community, making it important to share Zahra’s story, Nisar says. In wake of the recent anti-trans rallies in Toronto, it was hard for them to see older conservative people from the brown community “arching with so much hate.”

They want people in the South Asian community to see and celebrate where they are now and push their community expectations through the play. They also hope the younger generation is inspired to go into the kitchen and talk to their mothers.  

Rami Kahlon, who plays the role of Aisha, the “bratty younger sister,” in Dil Ka, says the play is a form of reconciliation between who the characters are as people, their family, cultural values, and faith. She says her character is humorous, mischievous, and impulsive — qualities they both share. 

“I think that is a beautiful, spontaneous way of being and I think it’s something that I really appreciate in Aisha.”

Kahlon says she enjoys exploring her character because of the similarities in the background in which they grew up. She also says it was healing to reconcile and connect with the way she grew up through the play. 

She says there is also a lot of imagery and use of metaphors in the play that stood out to her.

“I think that there’s this magical, realism aspect of the play that’s going to be really beautiful and impactful.”

Kahlon hopes the play inspires people to be who they are without feeling ashamed. 

“It’s beautiful to be queer, brown, and Muslim, and that these things don’t have to be separate, but they can actually inform each other and help each other in a way that makes sense,” Nisar says. 

To purchase tickets for Dil Ka, visit the Presentation House Theatre’s website.